Air pollution is a familiar environmental health hazard. We know what we’re looking at when brown haze settles over a city, exhaust billows across a busy highway, or a plume rises from a smokestack. Some air pollution is not seen, but its pungent smell alerts you.
It is a major threat to global health and prosperity. Air pollution, in all forms, is responsible for more than 6.5 million deaths each year globally, a number that has increased over the past two decades.
Air pollution is a mix of hazardous substances from both human-made and natural sources.
Vehicle emissions, fuel oils and natural gas to heat homes, by-products of manufacturing and power generation, particularly coal-fueled power plants, and fumes from chemical production are the primary sources of human-made air pollution.
Nature releases hazardous substances into the air, such as smoke from wildfires, which are often caused by people; ash and gases from volcanic eruptions; and gases, like methane, which are emitted from decomposing organic matter in soils.
Traffic-Related Air Pollution (TRAP), a mixture of gasses and particles, has most of the elements of human-made air pollution: ground-level ozone, various forms of carbon, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and fine particulate matter.
Ozone, an atmospheric gas, is often called smog when at ground level. It is created when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, industrial boilers, refineries, and other sources chemically react in the presence of sunlight.
Noxious gases, which include carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides (NOx), and sulfur oxides (SOx), are components of motor vehicle emissions and byproducts of industrial processes.
Air pollution and climate change affect each other through complex interactions in the atmosphere. Air pollution is intricately linked with climate change because both problems come largely from the same sources, such as emissions from burning fossil fuels. Both are threats to people’s health and the environment worldwide. Read more: Health Impacts of Air Quality.
When the National Ambient Air Quality Standards were established in 1970, air pollution was regarded primarily as a threat to respiratory health. In 1993, NIEHS researchers published the landmark Six Cities Study, which established an association between fine particulate matter and mortality.
Air pollution exposure is associated with oxidative stress and inflammation in human cells, which may lay a foundation for chronic diseases and cancer. In 2013, the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization (WHO) classified air pollution as a human carcinogen.
Research on air pollution and health effects continually advances. Public health concern now includes cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, diabetes mellitus, obesity, and reproductive, neurological, and immune system disorders.
Air pollution and birth outcomes are linked as global public health concerns. Researchers analyzed indoor and outdoor air pollution data from all inhabited continents along with key pregnancy outcomes. Their findings indicate efforts to reduce PM2.5 exposure could lead to significant reductions in the number of low-birth weight and pre-term birth infants worldwide. Air pollution reduction would be especially beneficial for children born in low- and middle-income countries.
Household combustion devices, motor vehicles, industrial facilities and forest fires are common sources of air pollution. Pollutants of major public health concern include particulate matter, carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Outdoor and indoor air pollution cause respiratory and other diseases and are important sources of morbidity and mortality.
WHO data show that almost all of the global population (99%) breathe air that exceeds WHO guideline limits and contains high levels of pollutants, with low- and middle-income countries suffering from the highest exposures.
Air quality is closely linked to the earth’s climate and ecosystems globally. Many of the drivers of air pollution (i.e. combustion of fossil fuels) are also sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Policies to reduce air pollution, therefore, offer a win-win strategy for both climate and health, lowering the burden of disease attributable to air pollution, as well as contributing to the near- and long-term mitigation of climate change.
In a landmark collaboration with over 30 international experts, the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed the first Air Pollution and Health Training toolkit (APHT), specifically tailored for health workers to be unveiled at the end of 2023. The toolkit includes downloadable training modules accompanied by a manual using a train-the-trainers approach to inform and empower health care professionals. In anticipation of the toolkit’s launch, an instrumental step is being taken to equip health care professionals for the challenges ahead by launching the user-friendly OpenWHO online training program, to coincide with this year’s International Day for Clean Air for blue skies. This strategic move reflects a commitment to addressing air pollution concerns and fostering healthier conditions for all.
Air pollution is a significant global health challenge, with far-reaching consequences on both individual well-being and public health. WHO estimates that, globally, air pollution is responsible for about 7 million premature deaths per year from ischemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer, and acute respiratory infections such as pneumonia, mainly affecting children in low- and middle-income countries.
Air pollution also threatens the global economy as it imposes enormous health costs, representing 6.1% of the global gross domestic product (more than US$ 8 trillion in 2019).
Hundreds of specific substances are considered hazardous when present in trace amounts in the air. These pollutants are called air toxics. Many of them cause genetic mutations or cancer; some cause other types of health problems, such as adverse effects on brain tissue or fetal development. Although the total emissions and the number of sources of air toxics are small compared with those for criteria pollutants, these pollutants can pose an immediate health risk to exposed individuals and can cause other environmental problems.
Most air toxics are organic chemicals, comprising molecules that contain carbon, hydrogen, and other atoms. Many are volatile organic compounds (VOCs), organic compounds that readily evaporate. VOCs include pure hydrocarbons, partially oxidized hydrocarbons, and organic compounds containing chlorine, sulfur, or nitrogen. They are widely used as fuels (e.g., propane and gasoline), as paint thinners and solvents, and in the production of plastics. In addition to contributing to air toxicity and urban smog, some VOC emissions act as greenhouse gases and, in so doing, contribute to global warming. Some other air toxics are metals or compounds of metals—for example, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium.
In many countries, standards have been set to control industrial emissions of several air toxics. The first hazardous air pollutants regulated in the United States (outside the workplace environment) were arsenic, asbestos, benzene, beryllium, coke oven emissions, mercury, radionuclides (radioactive isotopes), and vinyl chloride. In 1990 this short list was expanded to include 189 substances as part of the significant amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1970. By the end of the 1990s, specific emission control standards were required in the United States for “major sources”—those that release more than 10 tons per year of any of these materials or more than 25 tons per year of any combination of them.
Like people, animals, and plants, entire ecosystems can suffer effects from air pollution. Haze, like smog, is a visible type of air pollution that obscures shapes and colors. Hazy air pollution can even muffle sounds.
Anybody can take steps to reduce air pollution. Millions of people every day make simple changes in their lives to do this. Taking public transportation instead of driving a car, or riding a bike instead of traveling in carbon dioxide-emitting vehicles are a couple of ways to reduce air pollution. Avoiding aerosol cans, recycling yard trimmings instead of burning them, and not smoking cigarettes are others.
(Author is a columnist and can be mailed at [email protected]. X/Twitter: @haniefmha)
